Saturday, March 28, 2015

Welcome to your life; there's no turning backEven while we sleep we will findYou acting on your best behaviorTurn your back on mother natureEv'rybody wants to rule the world

It's my own desire, it's my own remorseHelp me to decide. Help me make the mostOf freedom and of pleasureNothing ever lasts foreverEverybody wants to rule the world

There's a room where the light won't find youHolding hands while the walls come tumbling downWhen they do, I'll be right behind youSo glad we've almost made itSo sad they had to fade itEv'rybody wants to rule the world

Like the Number 1, God is an irreducible and undivided unity, a singularity that is the simplicity behind every complexity. This oneness is the foundational and undivided mystery within the cosmos, the harmony centering human communities, the common thread uniting diverse cultures and nations, and the interior peace of an undivided mind.-Timothy Carson, The Square Root of Godart via Doug

The rest of the population should worry about the future too. The politicians, bureaucrats, chief police officers and corporate leaders of tomorrow are at universities which teach that free debate and persuasion by argument are ideas so dangerous they must be banned as a threat to health and safety. Unless we challenge them in the most robust manner imaginable, whatever kind of country they grow up to preside over is unlikely to be a free one.-as excerpted from this Nick Cohen essaythanks glenn

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it grows on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.-Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his essay Self-Reliance

"The men who distrust freedom never sleep. They are always looking for an opportunity to control your life and mine and to do it with the best of intentions. Usually we are told that controls are for our own good in a complicated and uncertain world. The origin of this idea in modern times was the dictator Mussolini, who said, 'We were the first to assert that the more complicated the forms of civilization, the more restricted the freedom of the individual must become.' "-Walter Wriston

How you communicate communicates. Some people think they need to "speak business" to prove they belong in business. They think a compulsive use of consulting buzzwords and MBA jargon makes them sound like they've learned the secret code. Unfortunately, that kind of acronym-laced talk doesn't demonstrate a business-smart brand; it comes across as "the brand called insecure." A far better strategy is to know all the right jargon but to translate it into words and ideas that ordinary people can understand. Your brand is a lot more valuable if you can talk business using real English.-Alan M. Webber: Rules of Thumb: 52 Truths For Winning At Business Without Losing Your Self

"Notice, too, the ways in which fossil fuels have contributed to preserving the planet. As the American author and fossil-fuels advocate Alex Epstein points out in a bravely unfashionable book, “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels,” the use of coal halted and then reversed the deforestation of Europe and North America. The turn to oil halted the slaughter of the world’s whales and seals for their blubber. Fertilizer manufactured with gas halved the amount of land needed to produce a given amount of food, thus feeding a growing population while sparing land for wild nature."-full post from my favorite optimist is here.

"A rising proportion of medical expenditure is now devoted to prolonging the lives of the very old and the terminally ill. The costs of this are potentially unlimited."

"Perhaps the greatest challenges in modern healthcare are not those of meeting the spiralling cost of advanced medical technologies. They lie in accepting that we are all going to die, and learning to do so with dignity."

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

The Hollies.........................................The Air That I Breathe

If I could make a wishI think I'd passCant think of anything I needNo cigarettes, no sleep, no light, no soundNothing to eat, no books to read

Making love with youHas left me peaceful, warm, and tiredWhat more could I askTheres nothing left to be desiredPeace came upon me and it leaves me weakSo sleep, silent angel, go to sleep

Sometimes, all I need is the air that I breatheAnd to love youAll I need is the air that I breatheYes to love youAll I need is the air that I breathe

Peace came upon me and it leaves me weakSo sleep, silent angel, go to sleep

Sometimes, all I need is the air that I breatheAnd to love youAll I need is the air that I breatheYes to love youAll I need is the air that I breathe

Sometimes, all I need is the air that I breatheAnd to love youAll I need is the air that I breatheYes to love youAll I need is the air that I breatheAnd to love youAll I need is the air that I breatheYes to love you

.............................................in about ten years. More than you want to know about the "Millennials" is here. I particularly like this one:

Money.

Millennials don't want to worry about having enough money. They don't need to be rich; they just want to make sure that they have enough to secure their financial future and still do all the things they love to do today.

I wonder if they realize that having enough money "to secure their financial future and still do all the things they love to do today" probably puts them into the hated "1%"? Stay tuned.

To this German parent, it seems that America’s middle class has taken overprotective parenting to a new level, with the government acting as a super nanny. “Nearly all respondents remember childhoods of nearly unlimited freedom, when they could ride bicycles and wander through woods, streets, parks, unmonitored by their parents,” writes Jeffrey Dill, one of the researchers.But when it comes to their own children, the same respondents were terrified by the idea of giving them only a fraction of the freedom they once enjoyed.-As excerpted fromThe Case for Free-Range Parenting, from the Op-Ed page of the NYT no less.

The “Wizard of Oz” is the best single-source explanation of American politics. Specialists, to be sure, will want to read the Federalist papers, de Tocqueville and the speeches of Lincoln, but the 1939 MGM movie tells most of the story. We are a nation of scarecrows without a brain, tin men without a heart, and lions without courage. Nothing is going to fix us, but the next best thing is to feel better about ourselves. A broken-down carnival huckster impersonating the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz gives our three national archetypes not what they need, but the next best thing: A phony diploma, a testimonial, and a medal. The party favors don’t help the feckless trio (the Scarecrow proceeds to recite a comically mistaken formula for the length of the sides of an isosceles triangle) but they did wonders for their self-esteem.

He closes:

Nothing that Mr. Netanyahu can do will placate the Great and Powerful Ob. It may be painful and in some ways damaging, but he has no choice but to ignore the man behind the curtain.

"Walt very often paid little attention to my opinion. Very rarely did he do anything because I suggested it. Which, by the way, is something I appreciate. There is nothing more dangerous than a client who does what you tell him to do. You want a client who listens, thinks things through, and makes his own decision."-Peter Drucker, talking about Walter Wriston, as excerpted from here.

The bias of errors of principle carries away men into perilous courses, as soon as their will does not control their passion or talent. Hence the extraordinary blunders, and final wrong head, into which men spoiled by ambition usually fall. Hence the remedy for all blunders, the cure for blindness, the cure of crime, is love. "As much love, so much mind," said the Latin proverb. The superiority that has no superior, the redeemer and instructor of souls, as it is their primal essence, is love.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, as excerpted from his essay Worship

Freedom is an independent inner state, whereas liberty is a consequence of collective social judgments and subject to restriction in order to serve the common good. It is a serious error to confuse the two as all actions and choices have consequences. We eventually have to accept responsibility for our choices, decisions, and their consequences. Every act, thought, and choice adds to a permanent mosaic; our decisions ripple through the universe of consciousness to affect the lives of all. Every act or decision made that supports life supports all life, including one's own. The ripples we create return to us.

"I've never forgotten for long at a time that living is struggle. Every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for - whether it's a field, or a home, or a country."
-Thornton Wilder, as excerpted from The Skin of Our Teeth

1. You can do anything I ask. I have asked you to perform miracles, and have made it clear that miracles are natural, corrective, healing, and universal. There is nothing they cannot do, but they cannot be performed in the spirit of doubt or fear. When you are afraid of anything, you are acknowledging its power to hurt you. Remember that where your heart is, there is your treasure also. You believe what you value. If you are afraid, you are valuing wrongly. Your understanding will then inevitably value wrongly, and by endowing all thoughts with equal power will inevitably destroy peace. That is why the Bible speaks of "the peace of God which passeth understanding." This peace is totally incapable of being shaken by errors of any kind. It denies the ability of anything not of God to affect you. This is the proper use of denial. It is not used to hide anything, but to correct error. It brings all error into the light, and since error and darkness are the same, it corrects error automatically.-The Course In Miracles
Chapter 2, II

"Purity of intention or devotion to truth is not expected of public figures who routinely distort facts and truth in order to win and persuade. For the seeker of truth, however, the surrendering of attachments to positionalities is a necessary step and therefore a primary challenge."-David Hawkins

"According to economist Glen Weyl, the average salary of a top-25 hedge fund manager is more than that of all teachers in the Chicago school district combined."-as excerpted from hereThe brain asks, "Could this possibly be true?" The Oracle Google was consulted. The Chicago Public School system employed 22,519 teachers for the 2013-14 year (total employees of CPS, same year, = 41,579). Since the average pay for a Chicago Public School teacher is a bit more that $71,000, that would mean, for the above quote to be true, that the average salary of a top-25 hedge fund manager was $1,598,849,000. Seems difficult to believe. Yet, a few more clicks on Google and we find this, In total, the 25 highest-earning hedge fund managers and traders made $24.3 billion in 2013. So, in conclusion, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that in 2014 your basic top-tier successful hedge fund manager made more money than all of the teachers in the Chicago Public School system combined. Holy career choices, Batman. Hope he/she created a ginormous amount of value.

....................................................................is back with another edition of Random Thoughts. A few excerpts:

When observing negotiations, consider which side wants an agreement the most. That side is the likely loser..... There should be at least one novel in your life which is periodically re-read..... Although this is often said of any presidential election, the next one will indeed be one of the most important in American history.... The most popular game in any nation is rarely acknowledged. It is called "Kick the Can Down the Road." .... The secret to stumbling is to stumble uphill.